Following the endless conversations in the car this afternoon that stressed me out beyond belief.....

[Blandmum]

.....Does anyone know how I should talk to my kids to stop them talking to me????

DD started talking at 11 months. She is now 10, and off hand, I don't think that she has ever stopped talking

I have been known to shout 'Be QUIET! Be QUIET for FIVE MINUTES or I will crash the car and we will all DIE!!! Is that what you want? Is IT?' a very deranged manner.
But that's really for bickering, which honestly drives me so, so mad that I do think it makes me unfit to drive. I think half a bottle of wine is less of a hazard than two small children in teh car tbh. (and no, I don't drink and drive, before you get the MN pitchforks out!)

You sound like me Aloha! I also agree that having children in the car is far more distracting than eating an apple or even talking on a mobile phone

I was thinking about this today (although quite when I had enough time and silence to think, I don't know). I KNOW myself a year ago (oh no, will my little girl ever talk?) would hate me now. I KNOW myself in ten years ago (oh no, will this grouchy teenager ever speak to me again?) would hate me now. But me RIGHT now would like a little peace occasionally, and wonders WHO taught DD circular breathing (actually, I have my suspicions, I have this friend ...) and will she ever shut up?

I have a whitterer too! Sometimes I just want to yell Shut up shut up shut up but instead yell "Stop talking for just two minutes PLEASE??!!" which works for a little while...

The crazy thing is he absolutely will not talk to anyone he doesn't know and won't answer direct questions from anyone other than those he is really close to, still won't talk to nursery staff if they ask him something and he's been there a year!

And why do they always want to talk loader and in a more demanding way the minute you are on an important phone call?? Grrrr

ds (2.7) doesn't shut up ever. When he runs out of things to say he just repeats 'what you doing' until you scream. Then he carries on repeating it while you sit in a corner rocking quietly.

He has begun asking questions 'what for' (i.e. why).

I have turned into my mum - phrases I swore I would never use 'because I said so', 'because it just is', and 'will you just be quiet for 2 fricking minutes'

My parents find it hilarious - apparently its payback for how bad I was as a child.

Climbingwalls, I wonder if our kids would talk to each other?! DD is just the same, actually it's quite a good tactic to get her to shut up, introduce her to someone. Go to shop, have kindly shop assistant attempt to engage her in conversation. Shtum. Have friend round that she's met slightly few than a million times before. Shtum.

lol

califrau, mine do that number thing too. Or it will be 'I saw the first fire engine' 'No I saw the first fire engine' grrr.

Or they favourite number mind-screwing argument is to do with infinity.
ds 'I counted 100 cars',
dd 'well I counted infinity'
ds 'you can't count infinity, it's a concept' (not that he knows what this means - but he's heard me say that to him)
dd 'I've counted infinity plus one'
ds 'you can't and anyway, I've counted infinity plus 3 mumeeeeeeeeeeeeeee who has counted more'
arrrrrrrrghhhhhhhh

have realised that if I turn the aircon on full blast AND put the radio in the front of the car, it nearly drowns both of them out

Aloha, you sound just like me in the car - DD, Mummy is DRIVING she CANNOT look back at you to see what it is you are wibbling on about (I know damn well it's her manky dolly dancing to the radio - thanks OH for starting that one!) and dd can't even talk properly yet - I'm dreading it!

I think it would be a good idea if all cars for families had one of those screens like taxi drivers have, then you wouldn't be able to hear them at all unless you used the intercom.

I once got stuck in a traffic jam for 4 hours with ds - then aged nearly 5. He was delighted - it was the prefect opportunity to talk about football, with only the occsional pause to pee into an empty Starbucks coffee cup.....
I am still getting flashbacks, but I have stopped twitching........

Actually, I don't think he paused while he was peeing.....

With ds1 we regularly tell him he has used up all his questions for today.....his favourite line is "But I just want to ask/tell you something" - invariably at the point when I am attempting to squeeze into a too-small parking space and scratching my neighbours fancy sports car in the process.....we have no off-street parking and you can guarantee I will be shrieking "No talking while I am parking" several times each day!

On a recent rainy Sunday, after an all day non stop stream of chatter from dd, I sighed, looked at her and said 'I think you like to talk alot more than I do. Sometimes I just like to be quiet.' She was momentarily silent while she considered that (for her) incomprehensible statement. And then it began again....'but mummy, why do you like to be quiet? Is it because you don't have anything to say?'....and on it went.....

Dd2 didn't talk until she was 2.5yrs but has never stopped since. She's a good swimmer, usually under water, and the joke in our house is that when she swims under water, she comes up occasionally not for air but to talk.

Dd1 began chatting at 9mths and loves, loves, loves to talk. She's 20 this month but we've never had teenage sulks with her because she cannot go more than three minutes without voicing her opinion on something or other.

I think you have a good point there suedonim. These stream of consciousness offspring are not likely to be morose brooders in later life, are they.
Over the weekend I simultaneously had dd asking me "how do you make a strawberry? how do you make RED? how do you make hair? how do you make pencils? (tiny voice) No-one is listening to me, boo hoo" while ds was off on one of his riffs about Doctor Loo and the Kaleks, his latest story.
It was like having a metal bucket over your head and two people hitting it with sticks.
My top tip for frazzled drivers is to share the jibber jabber and take them on public transport wherever you can. It gives other members of the community a cheap laugh and you might just get some sympathy

You spend the first two years getting them to walk and talk, and the next sixteen trying to get them to sit down and shut up.

DS2:"Mummy do I like chocolate"
Me: "Yes, I think so"
DS2:" Why?"

How do you answer that? And it's endless. I think that the word 'why' should be expunged from the language.

Lol at the things they come out with, I think it's wonderful the way their minds are untrammelled by the sort of gloop that clutters up mine nowadays.

I'm still wrestling with a question dd2 came out with. 'Mummy, can deaf people hear themselves think?'

we do the "last one to talk gets a prize" in the car, too - it scarily works

I think of dd's chat as like the gas in fizzy water - the proto-chat bubble forms, it swells, it takes off and bursts - it's a chemical process and (unless she's competing with ds in the car - see above) she doesn't really know she's going to speak until she does.

It's a bit of a problem just now as she's doing it in class, and then being, er, assertive when told off => got sent home on Friday. We sat down and made a list of ideas "for what I can do when there is something I really really want to say" - ideas like "make a two-word note of it on a bit of scrap paper & wait till playtime". We will see if it does any good.

When the stream-of-consciousness witter get particularly relentless I have been known to ask, "Do you every worry that you talk too much?" which stops them in their tracks for, ooh, about 15 seconds.

Dd2 this morning was wittering for the whole 45 minutes it takes me to accompany ds to school on his bike. She likes to make up little songs, as well -- this morning we had a good 20 minutes of tuneless warbling mainly featuring the words 'marmalade on toast'.

Mine are all champion talkers -- my dad, who is exceptionally taciturn, even for a bloke of his generation, once took ds for a nice long walk up the hill on the opposite side of the valley. I was sitting in the garden feeding dd2, and because of the weird acoustics of the valley I could hear ds's little piping voice tweeting continuously until they were right over the hill. When they came back, my father made himself a cup of tea, and after about 10 mins of silence suddenly said, "Christ, he does talk, doesn't he?"

audio books are a godsend
as are portable cd players WITH headphones.
get the kids wired up in the back seat

and relax!

dd was born talking and hasn't stopped in 11 years.